When people ask what is political correctness, this is

Stevenson College, part of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is apologizing to its students for serving Mexican food during “Intergalactic” night.

In a letter sent out to students, the college apologized for having “a Mexican food buffet,” while also featuring spaceships and aliens. The college received complaints saying the combination was racist because of the association between Mexicans and illegal immigrants.

Oh my God.

“We would never want to make a connection between individuals of Latino heritage or undocumented students and “aliens” and I am so sorry that our College Night appeared to do exactly that,” wrote Carolyn Golz who had taken this picture of the activities before the complaints:

After receiving complaints, Dr. Golz said that the event “demonstrated a cultural insensitivity on the part of the program planners and, though it was an unintentional mistake, I recognize that this incident caused harm within our community and negatively impacted students.”

As a result, Dr. Golz “will require cultural competence training for Programs staff, in addition to implementing mechanisms for future program planning that will ensure college programs are culturally sensitive and inclusive.”

I guess this means you also can’t serve Mexican food at a Superman movie showing, as Superman is also an undocumented alien.

Longknives

David Garrett

Longknives

DG- There was some weird ‘PC’ idealogy creeping into University when I studied at Otago nearly 20 years ago! (Some of the stories my Teacher’s College friends told me were bizarre)- I shudder to think how bad it is now..

Ed Snack

Yoza, I don’t think he is, but apparently as all aliens are “illegal immigrants” to serve Mexican food at an “Intergalactic Night” implies somehow that all Mexicans are aliens, or illegal immigrants, or something.

It is difficult to parody such events these days, “real life” itself seems a parody.

“And so, once again, students are being encouraged to cultivate a kind of pretentious racial paranoia, in which almost any innocuous thing can, via mental convolution, be associated with some pretext for grievance, however dishonest and opportunistic. Once some mental association has been discovered or contrived, everyone must act as if the innocuous object or action were in reality malicious and/or wounding, whatever the actual intention and regardless of how absurd and/or dishonest the claim of grievance is. Because whatever association of things is in the accuser’s head is assumed to be in everyone else’s head too.

And lo, grammar and punctuation are deemed racist, and paper coffee cups too. And hair, and genteel gardening programmes. And beards, on white men, are harmful and oppressive, and “glorify behaviours typical of people in white hegemonies.”

Yes, it’s ludicrous and pernicious, and not at all accidental. Dr Golz and her peers are in effect saying to students, “You should want to be the guy who bitches about the alleged racist subtext of party snacks. And if you do choose to behave that way, we’ll reward you and flatter you and make you feel important, while making other people jump through clown hoops to appease the feelings you pretend to have.” And the more implausible and contrived the claim of victimhood is, the more status points accrue, supposedly on account of the complainant’s heightened sensitivity and mental prowess. He has fathomed an injustice mere mortals cannot see.

And bewildered onlookers are expected to pretend that this is a high and noble function of an academic institution.”

The above a quote from the esteemed David Thompson from the blog of the same name.

David Garrett

Longknives: It is 25 years since I was at Uni…and I vividly recall writing a feature for the Law Students Mag on this new term “political correctness”…I still don’t quite understand why those openly promoting PC don’t “get” that requiring people to think in a particular way is a mark of a totalitarian society…and why that is very very bad…

MCos

Bob R

Unbelievable. Although, they have good reason to associate Mexicans with illegal aliens in California. One reason the state is having financial problems is the disastrous impact that’s having. Solid Democrat voters though.

“Research on Los Angeles immigrants by Harvard University scholar George J. Borjas shows that 40.1 percent of immigrant families with non-citizen heads of household receive welfare, compared with 12.7 percent of households with native-born heads. Illegal immigrants also increase public expenditures on health care, education, and prisons. In California today, illegal immigrants’ cost to the taxpayer is estimated to be $13 billion half the state’s budget deficit.”

Akaroa

“Political Correctness” – (Ugh! Wash my mouth out) – is a monster con-job worked on society by peculiar people who seem to have little point to their lives beyond being objectionable, devious and dishonest!

I don’t know when “Political Correctness” – (Ugh!) – first raised its totally irrelevant and ugly head – I suspect it came out of the USA like so many other pointless, meaningless and nonsensical fads and transient crazes.

But I’m pleased to say it hasn’t managed to get its sticky loathsome tentacles into a few people I know who – to take one example – still refer to handicapped people as ‘cripples’ with – I hasten to make clear – no sense or intention of demeaning the cripples, but rather having compassion for their disability.

The same with ‘lunatics’, ‘negroes’, ‘blind people’ and a host of other terms that for some reason suddenly became ‘infra dig’

Well, fortunately, there are still some of us who WON’T have a bar of this affected nonsense, and still speak the plain English of our forefathers, not some latter-day bastardised and watered-down excuse for the language.

thedavincimode

David Garrett

mara: Very difficult to do…And it starts right at the top…MP’s attending functions at parliament are subjected to lengthy powhiri (or that’s what we are told they are) in Maori, with no translation given…You are expected to sit there for as long as it goes on, with a respectful solemn face…woe betide anyone who leaves during the show, or asks for a translation…I did both, and there was damn near a diplomatic incident on both occasions…

thedavincimode

David Garrett

marcw: I’m not sure UC Santa Cruz is any great centre of learning…but it is significant that it’s a STATE Uni and therefore this rubbish is at least associated with, if not endorsed by, the Great State of California…

davinci: funny you should say that…once, 100 years ago, I was known by American colleagues as “the white wetback”…but that’s a whole other story…

hmmm… the Soviet think tank that came up with Political Correctness, if they members still live, must be pissing themselves laughing. The CCCP may have fallen in a heap but its warped thinking has spread and found a home amongst the dissolute trendy lefties of Aro Valley

The quote example above is just too funny to be made up. Its like the Python crew have dropped some heavy acid and are free forming sketches trying to out do the famous Norwegian Parrot skit….

Yoza – have you organised that comrades “feed the starving school kids” kitchen chain and secured the required funding from the pinot sipping socialist set yet???

David Garrett

Dave1924: Of course Yoza won’t actually DO anything! He’ll sit in his rapidly appreciating old villa in Mein Street Newtown, trying not to feel a warm feeling of wealth and satisfaction …But he might still dress like James K Baxter and send in his subscriptions to Greenpeace and Amnesty International…

Fentex

I think it’s worth pointing out that reading the linked to article does show there was no snide comment about illegal immigrants intended. The person who organised the food simply thought a Mexican Buffet was a nice spread. So this seems about as silly as portrayed.

If there had been (and I can remember of a few things reported from the U.S where people did intend insult in such choices) an intended connection then jumping to the conclusion it was fragile PC nonsense because the insult isn’t obvious to the reader would be folly. What if you lived in a place where people did routinely call you ‘wet back’, where ethnically delineated gangs did shoot people in drivebys and economic stresses drove wedges between people while politicians played with the fire of bigotry? You might be a tad defensive about possible insult.

There are places and times where insults have deadly consequences and is of import to the insulted. I don’t think people in one nation and culture should be too quick to think their experiences make them easily able to recognize what meaning and subtexts are expressed elsewhere.

For example; I never quite got why people were upset by Golliwogs (having had one as a kid) – but now I can imagine a person in a place and time who would have a reason to be offended by it and I wouldn’t leap to the assumption that everyone, everywhere should feel the same about them if I read of an occasion one might have been used to send a message.

So while this reads like an overwrought over-reaction to someones over-eagerness to take offence and find insult where none was intended the general dismissal of being aware of societies frictions may be an over-reaction the other way.

Harriet

The difference between the old Puritans and our new Putitans – the totalitarian leftists- is that the leftist men want to be princesses, while the women are always at war with men. The new Puritans are not about children, they are not about human nature.

The new Puritans are more appropriately called Impuritans because they worship everything evil and despise anything good. While the old Puritans had 12 children.

Maggy Wassilieff

OneTrack

As Ed notes above, it was only the progressive SJWs who immediately made some sort of association in their minds between mexicans and illegal aliens. And then made the quantum leap to extraterrestrial aliens. The first bit sounds racist to me, but what would I know, I didn’t take a PhD in Political Science. The second bit just sounds mental.

I remember reading an earlier story from the University of California where students voted to pull down the US flag from their campus. It’s now university policy for a ban on all flags, including the US flag.

Those involved in the effort were overwhelmingly Hispanic. Remember, for the first time ever, Hispanics are the outright majority in the state of California. It coincides with the state’s rapid decline as America’s economic powerhouse.

Let’s watch this space. I think we can expect to see a lot more idiocy where this came from.

cha

I first heard the phrase “politically correct” in the late 1940s and early 1950s in reference to the political debates between Socialists and members of the United States Communist Party (CP).

[…]

The term “politically correct” was used disparagingly to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in equalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.

mara

David G, donkeys years ago I flew from Wgtn to Auck. to attend a Maori employment conference. I did not have to but it was a paid for trip out of town. I saw the Harawiras completely commandeer this event, causing great disrespect to other invited speakers. I was the only one with courage enough to do the long walk down the aisle to the back door.

thePeoplesFlag

“… I’m not sure UC Santa Cruz is any great centre of learning…”

Then try using Google you clown, you might actually learn something. Maybe something like UC Santa Cruz being ranked 109th in the world by Times Higher Education World University Rankings – that’s 66 place higher than Auckland University.

itstricky

Very difficult to do…And it starts right at the top…MP’s attending functions at parliament are subjected to lengthy powhiri (or that’s what we are told they are) in Maori, with no translation given…You are expected to sit there for as long as it goes on

You poor soul. Asked to sit down, internalise all those complicated situations you had going on in your head and respect another speaker. Must have been a really tough day at the office.

simpleton1

Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot.

Now what did he say? “Are there any niggers here tonight?”

I know there’s one nigger, because I see him back there working.
Let’s see, there’s two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there’s another kike— that’s two kikes and three niggers. And there’s a spic.
Right? Hmm?
There’s another spic. Ooh, there’s a wop; there’s a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs.
And there’s three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there’s one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie.
Mm-hmm.
I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American.
I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop.

Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.

Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, “I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet,” and if he’d just say “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” to every nigger he saw, “boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie,” “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” ‘til nigger didn’t mean didn’t mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.”

simpleton1

The nineteen fifties was a time of tumultuous change. Integration had been made the law of the land. President Eisenhower had ordered the national guard to escort a small group of Black children into their school in Little Rock. They had to pass through a mob of adults screaming nigger. Nigger, nigger, nigger. What a terrible word. Lenny Bruce decided to deal with the issue.

One night at the Vanguard I watched in shocked amazement as he pointed to a customer and said, “Oh look, we’ve got a nigger here tonight.” The crowd froze. “And another darky is with him and a third jigaboo.” The silence was deafening. But Lenny was an advocate of the old show business maxim: if you’ve gone too far… go farther. He’d only just begun “Look over here”, he said, “A kike. And a mocky is at the table with him. And we got two spicks in the back. Hey, there’s a fag at the bar.” Slowly, the laughter began. Lenny said nigger a hundred times. Finally the crowd was howling. The pure outrageousness of it all had gotten to them and they simply had no choice.

When Lenny had them where he wanted them he turned serious. “It’s all arbitrary,” he told the crowd. “We agree to be offended by certain words. What if we decided that the word dentist was offensive. You dirty rotten dentist! Then that would become the insult du jour. But what if we simply decide not to be offended. What if we just take the sting out of these words and use them as terms of affection. ‘Hey niggah, how ya doin’? ‘Fine, honky, an’ you?’ What if we all just agreed that words can’t hurt? Then nobody could scream insults at a poor little Black girl in Little Rock.”

How poor Lenny’s wishes have not come true. Now we can’t even say nigger to condemn its use. We have to call it the “N-word.” How pathetic. And the “F-word” is next as the gay rebellion takes charge. At least you can still go outside to smoke. But certain words are taboo anywhere.

There are utube clips of some of his gigs and I recall seeing a movie, and I should see it again, as I have learnt that it is one way to deal to some of these officious attitudes. I am sure I will pick up even more nuances, well he did not leave much room for what he was about, and over time I think it will be even better, though it did end tragically, never the less, still a lot to think on.